Simultaneously sunny and freezing days are my favourite, the crispness of the air smoothed out by the warmth of our star piercing the atmosphere. That day a few weeks ago when I made this photograph was so cold I couldn't feel anything beneath the knee, but it was okay, because I captured such a beautiful scene.

Featuring our ever un-phased Border Collie Meg, and the bow of a Spanish Galleon washed up on the beach in 1588 during the Spanish Armada's attempted invasion. (Ribs of the ship's main structure are exposed occasionally when sand levels fall). Shot in Co. Mayo, ROI.

Photography info:

(Nikon D750 + Tokina 100mm f/2.8 Macro) @ 1/1250s f/7.1 ISO100

But there's a touch more to this one, because as you can see this is far from a 100mm field of view. The first photo was of Meg running across the glowing sand, it was gorgeous in it's own right but I wanted to give myself options in post-production so I stopped moving, fixed all my camera settings, and shot a series of vertical shots across the scene. This piece is a 14 photo panorama, with processing to highlight the contrast between the warm, bright left side, and the dark cold right side separated by the ominous silhouetted bow. I particularly love the spray from the waves adding a haze to the bottom of the distant hills.

I hope you've all been enjoying the 'Super Blue Blood Moon' these past couple of days. Unfortunately Sheffield's clouds descended on me for the moonrise and moonset yesterday, but fear not! Two weeks back this beautiful sliver of waxing moon was setting on the horizon during blue hour (shortly after sunset).

One of the things that makes professional photography 'professional' is being able to create repeatable results, let's have a chat about the most common example of this. Faking sunsets.

This happens a lot: you see a photographer's portfolio and gush over beautiful lighting, but the day comes for your shoot/wedding and England strikes with it's grey overcast skies. Photographs are all about the light, that's literally what it means (phōtos-light, graphé-drawing) 'drawing with light'.

A photograph of a subject can only be as good as the light, so photographers need to have ways of manipulating ambient light so we can create beautiful light in terrible weather. The art here is in finding ways to fake what could feasibly be ambient light, but in a lot of circumstances you don't want it to look fake.

Here's an example from a Wedding, the reception was outdoors on a country hillside but the sun wasn't coming out to play, so I set up a remotely firing strobe on a tall tripod with an orange gel to make it flash sunset coloured light whenever I took a photo. Positioned high enough to look like the light is coming from the horizon where we all wish the sun was. Using this fake sunset as both a compositional element, and as a nicely coloured rim light for the guests.

Another recent use for this technique was a commercial job for a Sheffield Dentists surgery, the client really wanted to present a warm atmosphere for a normally very clinical environment. I suggested lighting the interior of the surgery in a clean white light but having warm light coming in through the window, giving the look as if the sun was in the perfect place to come through the window. It's a lighting effect that will naturally occur, very rarely, but through the wonders of photography we can create it anytime. See below the group shot featuring the finished lighting, and then click through the following pictures to see the BTS. The rooms existing lighting is an ugly florescent strip, so I used a large softbox to give the white light from the same direction as the existing light but much brighter and softer for my subjects. Then set up a speedlight with an orange gel outside at a high (sun-like) angle, aiming at the window. The end result is a photograph that is 10x better than the real lighting, but it looks natural, you look at it and intuitively think the white light is coming from the ceiling florescent and the orange light is coming from the sunset outside.

The last example for this post is from a sunrise dancer photoshoot in the Peak District, we got out there unsociably early to shoot in the glorious countryside sunrise light before I had to run off and teach some morning Spinning classes. However, England being England, there were clouds all over the shop. The sky looked good, blue with broken clouds, but there were dense clouds by the horizon completely blocking the sunrise. I used a strobe in a softbox with the exterior baffle removed to give a harder edge to the light and once again, gelled the light orange. It provided a beautiful tonal contrast to the blue sky, rimmed his physique, and looks natural as if it was the sun kissed glow itself.

So, don't let bad lighting and weather stop you! This type of technique is infinitely useful in Wedding, Portraiture, Commercial, and property photography. Don't let a exclusively 'natural light' photographer let you think they can repeat their results, as unfortunately there are too many variables that we as Photographers should be able to control. You don't want to leave your Wedding down to luck of the day. Let me know any times you've used off camera flash to simulate and improve upon existing light in the comments or on my Instagram!

Living in Sheffield I am blessed with it being one of the greenest cities in the world, it is full of parks and this little album was shot over about an hour in Endcliffe Park. As an extra challenge I opted not to crop any images. For the uninitiated; Wildlife is ALWAYS cropped, as birds especially just don't like humans, and as you can't get near them you need a big ass lens. A big as lens will get you close, but usually not close enough, we always want something longer...

I was shooting with a Nikon D750 Full Frame DSLR, with a 35 year old, manual focus Nikkor 400mm f/3.5 + a TC-14B teleconverter, giving a 560mm field of view and a razor thin depth of field.

There are some cute stories here, birds chasing mates, wood pigeons getting intimate and then deciding to separate and hide their heads? Animals are strange, and adorable, as illustrated by the puppy I couldn't resist ending the album with. Enjoy!

Some of the most fun pet photography sessions are when we all go for a dog walk with the owners, and I end up running around just as much as the dog! Here's a few shots from a walk on a very grey, overcast, boring day. It's all in how you capture & edit though, this is England so we have to learn how to deal with miserable weather. As you'll see the contrast in the photos is still beautiful.